Current wildfire detection and monitoring systems utilize multispectral line scanning sensors on aerial platforms. Examples of these types of systems include the MODIS Airborne Simulator (MAS) sensor demonstrated by NASA Ames on the ER-2 and the US Forest Service PHOENIX System flown on a Cessna Citation Bravo. These systems have demonstrated substantial utility in detecting and monitoring wildfires from airborne platforms. However, these systems are custom engineered from the “ground up” relying on custom design and fabrication of complex opto-mechanical servos, sensors, readout electronics and packaging. As a result, these systems are subject to malfunction and are difficult to service.
A typical fire detection mission scenario involves imaging a 10 km swath from an aircraft at 3 km altitude over an area of fire danger. Missions are usually conducted at night to reduce false alarms due to solar heating. Existing systems employ a line scanning, mid-wave infrared (MWIR) band as the primary fire detection band along with a long wave infrared (LWIR) band which provides scene context. By combining the MWIR and LWIR data, a hot spot detected by the MWIR band can be located with respect to ground features imaged in the LWIR band. The line scanner provides excellent band to band registration, but requires a complex rate controlled scanning mirror and significant post processing to correct for scan line to scan line variations in aircraft attitude and ground speed. These sensitive scanning mechanisms are also prone to failure and are difficult to service. While the location of the detected fires is shown in the image, there is no actual computation of a specific ground coordinate for each fire pixel. This requires a specially trained image interpreter to analyze each image and manually measure the latitude and longitude of each fire pixel.